John Kirton
Director, G7 Research Group
Co-director, G20 Research Group
Invited lecture at the Ranchmen's Club, Calgary
Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Abstract

When Canada hosted the Group of Eight (G8) summit at Calgary and Kananaskis in 2002, the optimism at the dawn of the new millennium had just been shattered by the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the new security threats they brought. When Canada hosted its next G8 summit, at Muskoka in June 2010 — Prime Minister Stephen Harper raised $7.3 billion (soon multiplied by the United Nations to $40 billion) to save the lives of the world's poorest mothers and their babies. He also had the bigger, broader Group of Twenty (G20), which he hosted the next day in Toronto, prevent the latest financial crisis erupting in Europe from going global, by having leaders make historic commitments to control soaring government deficits and debts. As Canada prepares to host its next G7 summit, now without a suspended Russia, at Charlevoix, Quebec, on June 8-9, 2018, these challenges have reappeared, with mounting government deficits and debt, energy threats from a rogue Russia, and food insecurities compounded by climate change and populist protectionist pressures from Donald Trump's United States. Can Justin Trudeau make Charlevoix live up to the legacy of Canada's summits in 2002 and 2010? What advice can Calgarians give to help?

Introduction

It is great to be back in Calgary, the fifth most liveable city in the world, the site of the historic Group of Eight's (G8) Calgary-Kananaskis Summit in 2002 and the hometown of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, who hosted the G8 summit in Muskoka and the Group of 20 (G20) Summit in Toronto in 2010.

Canada's next G7 summit, now with Russia suspended, takes place in Charlevoix, Quebec, on June 8-9, 2018 — a mere four months from now. Its host, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has said it will address five priorities: investing in growth that works for everyone; preparing for jobs of the future; advancing gender equality and women's empowerment; working together on climate change, oceans and clean energy; and building a more peaceful and secure world.

What will it do for you, for Canada and for the world? "Not much," most would say, if only due to the looming presence of U.S. president Donald Trump. The summit will bring him to Canada for the first time, much later than most newly elected U.S. presidents come. He will carry his nationalism, populism, protectionism and unpredictability into a country whose citizens' cherished values are global, open, free trading ones. So most predict a stormy summit, with Trump vetoing any serious advances the other G7 leaders want to make. The prospects are that Canada will be a "beautiful loser," rather than the global leader that the G7 could help it be.

So it is a good time to take a closer look at Canada's G7 summits in the recent past, to see how Canada has overcome such challenges before and how it can do so again this year. At the centre of the story stand the key issues of economic, energy and food security and Canada's G7 leadership here.

Kananaskis 2002

To start, take your mind back to New Year's Day 2002 when Canada formally assumed the presidency of the G8 for that year. Few were in an optimistic mood. The previous summit, in Genoa, Italy, in 2001, had been scarred by an al Qaeda terrorist plot to kill the leaders there, and by 300,000 often violent antiglobalization protestors, one of whom had been killed when he attacked the police. The world was still reeling from the dot.com boom-turned-bust that had shattered the hope that the digital economy would bring prosperity to all as the new millennium began. Argentina had just created the world's largest default in December 2001. Energy insecurity had surged with the collapse of Enron, blackouts in California, and low world oil prices of only $26.67 for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI). To cap it off, the unthinkable happened on September 11, 2001, when a small group of al Qaeda terrorists from half a world away killed over 3,000 innocent civilians, including 24 Canadians, in the World Trade Center in New York City, and U.S. military personnel in the Pentagon in Washington DC.

On that day, "America the victorious" in the long Cold War instantly became "America the vulnerable" in a new war against global, non-state threats. With the war in Afghanistan still not won, it remains America the vulnerable to this day.

The shock of 9/11 led Alberta premier Ralph Klein to demand that the summit scheduled for Kananaskis and Calgary be cancelled or, at least moved, far from Alberta's soil. Some said U.S. president George W. Bush would not even come to the summit, or would only fly up from a U.S. military base for the day. Many thought that to lure him here, and to make the summit a success, they would have to focus only on the war on terrorism, rather than the much broader agenda that they had previously agreed.

Yet Prime Minister Jean Chrétien stood his ground. He had designed an informal gathering of leaders in a secluded setting, with minimum ceremony, small delegations and no elaborately negotiated final communiqué, with the attending media and civil society kept in Calgary many kilometres away. He focused the agenda on terrorism, growth and, above all, Africa. To pave the way, he held six G8 ministerial meetings — for finance in Ottawa on February 7–8, labour in Montreal on April 25–27, environment in Banff on April 12–14, energy in Detroit on May 2–3, and foreign affairs in Whistler on June 12–13, and finance in Halifax on June 14–15 as the summit approached on June 26–27, 2002.

For African development, Chrétien added $1 billion in official development assistance (ODA) in the budget of December 10, 2001, and created the Canada Fund for Africa with another $500 million to be disbursed over three years. This catalyzed major new pledges from the United States, Europe and Japan at the United Nations Conference on Financing for Development in March 2002. He also raised additional money for the International Development Association (IDA). He sought greater private sector participation in responding to financial crises.

To boost global growth, Canada emphasized greater productivity as key to overcome the costs of terrorism being priced into G7 economies. He tried to resolve the debate between an America preferring fiscal stimulus and a Europe favouring fiscal restraint. He supported the newly launched Doha Development Agenda of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

To combat terrorism, Canada sought to expand the Action Plan on Terrorist Financing of the Group of 20 (G20) finance ministers and central bank governors and to build capacity in poor countries.

This worked. Kananaskis turned out to be the most successful summit to that time (see Appendix A, Appendix B, Appendix C, Appendix D). It produced a historically high 188 precise, future-oriented, politically binding, collective commitments. It mobilized close to $50 billion in new money for global public goods — $20 billion for the Global Partnership against Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, up to $6 billion for African development, $1 billion to top up the trust fund for heavily indebted poor countries and $28 billion for the IDA.

Kananaskis also made G8 governance more inclusive. Four leaders from Africa's leading democracy participated as equals in the summit's final session. The G8 agreed that Russia would host the summit in 2006.

At the summit media centre, Calgarians erased the dark memory of Genoa by producing a welcoming, picnic-like event. The local police force looked not like Genoa's imperial storm troopers but were friendly females, wearing shorts, riding bikes and handing out free bottles of water to protestors sweltering in the summer heat.

There was, however, one death. It came up in the mountains, when the RCMP removed a grizzly bear that had come too close to the leaders' site. When they shot it with a tranquilizer gun, it fell to the ground and died. So amidst his great success, Jean Chrétien could not say no animals were harmed in the making of his summit.

Muskoka-Toronto, June 25–27, 2010

Eight years later, Canada took the reins again. It now had to do two summits in tandem — first the G8 in Muskoka and then, the next day in Toronto, the new bigger, broader G20 one that had arisen in response to the American-turned-global financial crisis that had erupted in September 2008. Both summits were now hosted by a Calgarian. But, unlike Chrétien in 2002, Harper had only a minority government and had never hosted a G8 summit before. (Chrétien had hosted the G7 summit in Halifax in 1995, in addition to Kananaskis in 2002.)

Further challenges loomed. The world was still recovering from the greatest financial crisis and recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the spring of 2010 another financial crisis erupted when Greece went bankrupt and the euro-crisis began. North Korea sank a South Korean warship, in a clear act of war.

Yet pushed by skillful nongovernmental organizations, Harper made the centrepiece of the summit the Muskoka Initiative on Maternal, Newborn and Children's Health. He thus tried to mobilize money to reach the two UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that were the furthest behind. He did so knowing that a day later he would ask his G7 colleagues at the G20 summit in Toronto to commit to capping their deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) at 3% within three years, and to stop the cumulative rise of their national debt as a percentage of GDP within six years. As British prime minister David Cameron asked, how can anyone be expected to spend more one day and then cut back the next, especially if they will be held accountable for what they do.

It was a high-risk gamble for a leader whose officials initially said Harper should highlight democratization, Africa, accountability, energy, the Arctic and summit architecture. Instead, Harper had chosen economic growth and trade, climate change, and freedom, democracy, the rule of law and human rights. But by January 2010 maternal, newborn and children's health (MNCH) had won.

At the G8 summit itself, the leaders assembled at noon on Friday, June 25, to start discussing development and finance. They met alone on Friday evening and continued until noon the next day. They held sessions with invited African leaders and, for the first time, leaders from Colombia, Haiti and Jamaica.

On MNCH, each G8 member was asked for new funding through existing mechanisms, to scale up simple, proven instruments such as trained healthcare workers, vaccination, nutrition and clean water. Canada led by offering almost $3 billion over the following five years, with $1.1 billion being new money.

Where Harper led, other G8 leaders followed, to produce $5 billion in all. This would save the lives of 1.3 million children under five years old and of 64,000 mothers.[1] Others chipped in to produce $7.3 billion in all. Three months later, at the UN summit in September, the total was raised to $40 billion in new money for maternal and child health.

At Muskoka leaders also promised new money for prevention, treatment, care and support for HIV/AIDS and to create a polio-free world. So, at Muskoka, Harper hit a home run on health.

On food security, leaders reaffirmed their 2009 commitment to mobilize $22 billion over three years to feed the poor. They promised to deliver the outstanding $15.5 billion by 2012.

Charlevoix, June 8–9, 2018

So what is in store for Canada's Charlevoix Summit for four months from now? How well will Justin Trudeau, attending his third G7 summit and hosting his first, produce his five priorities of growth, jobs, gender equality, climate change and clean energy, and security?

First are the shocks that make leaders aware of their shared vulnerability and need to "hang together" in response. These could well come from several sources: new terrorist or cyber attacks, North Korean nuclear explosions or missile launches, extreme weather events or other ecological disasters, and new trade shocks from the United States or the United Kingdom. A new contagious financial crisis cannot be ruled out.

Second are the multilateral organizations from the 1940s that today are poorly equipped to cope. On December 25, 2017, the United Nations saw its members cut its budget of $1.2 billion in 2017–18 by $285 million for 2018–19, a reduction of about 24%. The assault was led by the Donald Trump's United States, which has also paralyzed the WTO by refusing to appoint to judges to its highest court. Budget cuts have also afflicted the World Food Programme, with more famine and deaths the direct result. Not surprisingly, in 2017 citizens in 25 countries gave the UN, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund lower approval ratings than the year before (see Appendix G).

Third, G7 countries have the capability to fill the gap (see Appendix H). All G7 countries are finally enjoying rising economic growth and employment. But rising interest rates, fiscal deficits, debt, and healthcare and pensions costs for their aging populations could constrain what they do.

So could their shrinking soft power. Public views of U.S. positive influence have plunged, making the United States less popular than China (Breene 2017). Also sagging are highly ranked Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Alone at the top, in first place, stands Canada, with the same score as the year before. Can the G7 count on Canada alone to restore its image and influence in the world?

Fourth, G7 leaders' devotion to the shared principles of open democracy, individual liberty and social advance could provide a unifying bonds, in the face of the mounting threats to these values from outside. But many doubt that Donald Trump shares such convictions, as least where a repressive, aggressive Russia is concerned.

Fifth, G7 leaders lack the political capital at home needed to forge the desired agreements abroad. Donald Trump has historically low approval ratings and his party faces mid-term elections in November. Theresa May has a feuding, faction-ridden minority government, Angela Merkel an uninspiring coalition government and Italy's leader Paolo Gentiloni the same. Emmanuel Macron of France and Shinzo Abe of Japan are more secure. So is Justin Trudeau, who still leads the public opinion polls. Moreover, 46% of his citizens are open to one another and the world, compared to only 30% who feel economically and culturally insecure (Levitz 2018) (see Appendix I). Can Trudeau convince his G7 colleagues to share Canadians' welcoming view of the world, where trade, climate change control and migrants are concerned?

Maybe, because the G7 summit is a private club that the leaders cherish as their own. It is often the ultimate lonely hearts club — the only place that democratic leaders can go to commiserate with their true peers and learn how to do a better job. Its magic worked with Trump last year at Taormina. It can again at Charlevoix, especially if the conference hotel and surrounding golf course live up to the standards Donald Trump expects of his own. And the leaders will be left alone together, with the media and protestors kept in Quebec City, many kilometres away.

These forces should push the Charlevoix Summit to produce a solid success.

On security, success will again come easy. All will agree to act more strongly against terrorism, especially in its newer forms of returning ISIS fighters, and cyber radicalization and recruitment through firms that hide behind the arguments of free speech, privacy and property rights. Russia and North Korea will be sanctioned. China will be discussed and perhaps noted by name in the communiqué. Myanmar and Venezuela will be scolded, but with little else to ensure democracy and human rights. The Middle East, North Africa and Afghanistan will be treated in a similar way.

On the economy, leaders will again endorse the need for "free and fair" trade, a modernized WTO, the prevention of China's dumping, and protection against its intellectual property and technology practices. They may even say encouraging things about the ongoing negotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership due to start in April. They will promise to forego currency wars and to raise their interest rates in a careful, even coordinated way. They will enthusiastically endorse the need for infrastructure investment to boost productivity, trade and jobs.

On jobs, all want more secure, better paying jobs for everyone. Here Donald Trump will have much to preach about, as he did recently in his State of the Union Address. All the leaders will agree that workers need to be educated to survive and thrive in the new digital economy. Each can offer policies that have worked at home for the others to adopt. The divisive issue of getting jobs for immigrants will be side-stepped, for only Justin Trudeau's Canadians believe that this is a good thing.

On gender, last year's success on women in the workplace will be reinforced. Leaders will heartily endorse the reports of the new women's advisory council that Trudeau announced at Davos in January. It will be harder to meet his ambitious desire to mainstream gender equality everywhere, by, for example, having monetary policy, climate policy and security policy credibly work for women. It is doubtful if robust language endorsing sexual and reproductive rights, gender identity and the me-too movement will survive the drafting of a consensus-driven communiqué.

There will be no $40 billion in new money to improve the lives of women, to match what the Muskoka Summit did. Charlevoix is thus likely to lack the credible, comprehensible, centrepiece achievement of the sort that the Calgary-Kananaskis and Muskoka summits had.

Climate change, oceans and clean energy will be the most difficult challenge, especially if another energy or ecological disaster erupts on the summit's eve. The memories of recent hurricanes hammering the United States, or fires destroying Fort McMurray and California's vineyards could easily be reawakened by smaller disasters made more likely every day.

The climate threat has now become compellingly clear. The past three years were the world's warmest ever. The oceans are steadily heating, reducing their value as sinks that absorb carbon from the atmosphere. The world's forests are shrinking, turning this carbon sink to a carbon source. The U.S. military has just said that half its global bases are already harmed by climate change. The latest Global Risks Report prepared for the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2018 placed climate change and its consequences as by far the world's greatest risk. It is what the global business community is most scared about.

So how should Alberta's ranchers, farmers, energy producers and users, and citizens respond, before it is too late? It is impossible to stop the threat by acting alone at home, for the problem is overwhelmingly produced abroad. Nor can Canada duck, hide and take a free ride: it is a major emitter and potential carbon sink.

Some might hope that the UN can solve the problem, but it is now clear that it cannot. At its summit in Paris in December 2015, its members agreed to limit post-industrial warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, but promised measures that, even if fully implemented, would collectively fail. And they agreed to wait five years before they even tried to do a better job. If we leave it to the UN, we could all fry and die.

Climate Change Control Recommendations

So it is up to the G7 to lead, as it has before. Here is list of things it could do this year.

Kill killer coal that generates electricity. Stephen Harper led the G7 in doing so in Canada in 2009, the United Kingdom followed in 2017, and France has just joined this "Power Past Coal" club. But Germany and the European Union are still burning some of the world's dirtiest coal. Japan has switched from climate-friendly nuclear power back to coal. And Donald Trump is trying to return the United States to coal. At Charlevoix, Germany and Japan should agree to phase out coal at a fixed date in the near future, before more of their own citizens die.

Stop fossil fuel subsidies. The G7 leaders and their G20 colleagues all agreed in 2009 to do so in the medium term. The G7 should do it now and stop financing others' subsidies anywhere. Efficient-energy exporters from market economies need a level playing field abroad. Just stopping these subsidies would give us $5.3 trillion to spend on other things and cut carbon emissions by up to 20%.

Export oil and gas now, to replace the killer coal still being used in the United States, Japan, elsewhere in Asia and beyond in the world. There is an urgent need to build the pipelines that can take Alberta's abundant oil and gas to tidewater to help get this done.

Reinforce renewables as the safe, secure clean energy source for the future. G7 governments should encourage citizens to farm the wind and sun and shift to hydro, geothermal and fully reliable tidal power.

Ban new offshore oil drilling, unless the private sector and their insurers pay the full life-cycle costs. The high Arctic should be kept free from hydrocarbons, for a disaster like the Deepwater Horizon in the Arctic is just too great risk to run.

Build clean infrastructure of a physical, digital and natural sort. This should include a trans-Canada pipeline network and electricity grid, roads covered in solar panels with charging stations for electric vehicles, more energy-efficient buildings and public district heating networks, which already allow renewables to supply 70% of the heat in cold, dark Sweden, 50% in Denmark and 40% in Finland (Collier 2018).

Conclusion

What do you want Canada's G7 summit in 2018 to do for you? Don't hesitate to offer ambitious offers, for we know that Calgarians have made a great contribution to G7 summitry before. Prime Minister Joe Clark did so on climate change and energy security at Tokyo in 1979 (Kirton and Kokotsis 2015). Calgarians helped Prime Minister Jean Chrétien do it at Kananaskis in 2002. Prime Minister Stephen Harper did it at Muskoka in 2010.

Above all, Calgary saved the summit from a tone-deaf U.S. president at Denver in 1997. Held three weeks before the devastating Asian-turned-global financial crisis erupted, the U.S. economy was riding high and host Bill Clinton triumphantly told his G7 partners that they should follow the American way. Just before they ended their work for their evening entertainment, Clinton gave each leader a cowboy costume to wear to the rodeo he had arranged. Confronted with this final act of arrogant American imperialism, the Europeans were ready to walk out and go home. Then Jean Chrétien spoke up: "Bill," he said, "I will come to your rodeo and dress the way you want. But I will wear my own cowboy costume from Canada's Calgary Stampede, which everyone knows is the best rodeo in the world." This broke the ice, the Europeans stayed, and Calgary saved the summit once again.

Note

[1] The announced contributions are as follows: United States, $1.3 billion in 2010–11 (26% of total G8 funding); Canada $1.0 billion within five years (22%); United Kingdom, $600 million in 2010–11 (12%); Germany, approximately $500 million within five years (10%); France, $400 million within five years (8%); Japan, $500 million (10%); Russia, $75 million (10%). The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would contribute $1.5 billion (20.5%). Contributions from Italy, the European Union, the other countries and the UN Foundation were announced later.

a. Grades up to and including 2005 are given by Nicholas Bayne; from 2006 on are given by John Kirton and the G7 Research Group and are generated according to a different framework and method.

b. Domestic Political Management: Number of compliments includes all explicit references by name to the full members of the summit that specifically express the gratitude of the institution to that member. The % of members complimented indicates how many of the 20 full members received compliments within the official documents.

c. Directional: number of references in the communiqué to the G7's core values of democracy, social advance and individual liberty.

e. Development of Global Governance: Bodies Min/Off is the number of new G7/8-countries institutions created at the ministerial and official level at or by the summit, or during the hosting year, at least in the form of having one meeting take place. The first number represents ministerials created. The second number represents official-level bodies created.

f. Attendees refers to the number of leaders of full members, including those representing the European Community from the start, and the number of invited participants of countries and/or of international organizations at the G7 leaders' session. Russia started as a participant in 1991 and became a full member in 1998. In 1975, the G4 met without Japan and Italy; later that year the G6 met. C=Countries; IO=International Organizations. The first number represents non-G7 countries who participated. The second number represents international organizations that participated.

Data are drawn from all official English-language documents released by the G8 leaders as a group. Charts are excluded. "# of Words" is the number of energy-related subjects for the year specified, excluding document titles and references. Words are calculated by paragraph because the paragraph is the unit of analysis. "# of Documents" is the number of documents that contain energy-related subjects and excludes dedicated documents.